By Vermouth , 15th July 9:16 pm
Now that E3 is no longer with us it’s time to take a look at the winners and losers from the game industry’s big event. This was a newly crafted E3 which had a very different flavor than in previous years. No longer was this a gigantic sensory orgy in the way of years past, but rather a big huge level industry event with a laundry list of games on display. This had an upside and a downside. The upside was it was much more focused on promoting games than in years past. In the press conferences there were only a handful of games that were not ostensibly 2007 games. Of course, the show had a handful of big winners who improved themselves considerably and some that were not as impressive.
The big winners were:
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By Vermouth , 13th July 12:54 am
Getting up yesterday morning the first item on my agenda was to catch the Nintendo E3 press event that was in the morning. This show was really as unimpressive as you can possibly imagine. For one thing it really served as a platform for Nintendo to talk up their sales success to the press and they really didn’t show much in the way of games. The biggest announcements from this show were release dates for Mario Galaxy & Smash Brothers along with the completely unsurprising unveiling of Mario Kart for the Wii which will have online multiplayer.
Miyamoto showed up to show off a big game at the end of it as usual - but instead of an awesome game we got Wii Fitness. I don’t believe it’s possible to be more disappointed. Instead of getting a new character franchise which the Wii could desperately use, they took the time to show me how I can do step-aerobics on my game console. Oddly enough the only games really present on the DS were Brain Age 2 and Zelda. For a system that is leading the whole world in sales month after month, it’s really surprising they didn’t show us but a few games. We saw none of the rumored titles like New Super Mario 2, no 2D Metroid, no Smash brothers DS. Nothing new which was a major disappointment.
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By Vermouth , 11th July 4:56 pm
Watching the Microsoft press conference at E3 this year I think it’s quickly evident what their aim was. It was not to build some long term hopes for the future by announcing a bunch of games that won’t be ready for a long time. What it was, was to reinforce this basic fact the Fall 2007 Xbox 360 lineup is one of the best, most complete game lineups in my lifetime.
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By Vermouth , 23rd June 1:49 pm
A little while ago GameTap debuted to a collective sense of “meh”. The game selection was not particularly impressive and $9.99 a month to play a bunch of old games seemed like a steep fee. But as the months went by, they kept adding more and more to the game catalogue. They also introduced a cheap first month for only 99 cents. Earlier this month I decided to take the leap and wow, this is a quality service. The game selection is excellent and the quality of the program is surprisingly nimble. The game library for this service includes three categories of games: regular “real” retail games, retro games and original games.
» Read all of “What’s on Tap?“…
By Vermouth , 19th May 5:12 pm
StarCraft is the biggest name in RTS gaming. Can Blizzard live up to the expectations? That’s the big question as Blizzard announced StarCraft 2 today. The original is one of the sacred cows of PC gaming, perfectly balanced, still played today. When a boy turns 13 in Korea, I read recently, he’s given a copy of the game as a coming of age content. And as of today the franchise has been given new life.
At 2:00 in the morning (Eastern Time) I was sitting up waiting for more information to enter my life, is that not a bit odd? I know given Blizzard’s track record that this game will be out years from now but here I am dutifully awaiting the announcement and super-excited that it’s not the oft rumored Galaxies of StarCraft MMORPG. This is one of the biggest franchises in history being announced, and this comes hot off the internet presses.
So the big questions are can they live up to the wild expectations people have for the sequel to possibly the greatest RTS ever? And can they manage to one-up their own prodigal franchise WarCraft? How will the game handle the move to 3d, and what of the story? Will we see a direct follow up or something more along the lines of WarCraft 3 that happens years after Brood War? A lot of questions not a lot of answers at this point but it conjures up a good deal of excitement.
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